Does progressivism point the way to a brighter future, or has it become the last line of defense for a failed political and economic status quo?

In his latest research study, released today by the Center for a Stateless Society, Kevin Carson makes the case for progressives as the bitter-enders of a social project made obsolete by liberating technologies and the production and distribution methods those technologies make possible.

“Thermidor of the Progressives: Managerialist Liberalism’s Hostility to Decentralized Organization” traces the development of managerialism in the political and economic realms, the history of progressive attachment to the managerial vision, and the siege mentality displayed by progressives as they confront what Carson calls the “Network Revolution.”

“For liberals,” writes Carson, author of _The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low Overhead Manifesto_, “the American Golden Age was the ‘Consensus Capitalism’ of the New Deal and the first post-WWII generation. … This general affinity for large-scale organization and hierarchy, more recently, has been reflected in hostility to the new forms of networked organization permitted by the emerging technologies of the late twentieth century.”

The study is freely available online and may be reproduced under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution license.

Portions of this comment (worth a repeat, in my view) were taken from another thread.

Kevin: I share your dislike of kneejerk liberals, and most liberals in general, and anyone with a

"reflexive love of government", as you put it. But this conflation of "liberal" with "progressive" is rubbish — befitting of Tea Party morons who are not capable of nuanced distinctions, not a person of your (high) intellectual stature. If you define "progressive" as people like Bill and Hillary Clinton, etc., (i.e. moderate Republicans, and unequivocal statists, and execrable robotic defenders of the status quo), then of course you’re right to scorn them. But I define progressive differently, and it is generally understood differently. Read some real progressive material at znet or wherever, and you’ll see what I mean.

ANY progressive worth their salt can rattle off a laundry list of abuses, excesses, failures, outrages and even atrocities of government and the U.S. government in particular, starting with U.S. foreign policy and ongoing/endless wars (and indeed the whole military-industrial complex), and continuing through blah de blah de blah (Tuskegee, Katrina, the War on Drugs, Philadelpha MOVE incident, whatever, insert 55 more things here). People who can so rattle off are not constitutional statists, as you suggest, and do not have a “reflexive love for government”. More like, at worst, a sometimes too-charitable overall approach to it. I cannot see blaming them all that much for failure to have an anarchist-style relentless hostility to the state, when they view the state (at least partially correctly at this point in time) as the only mechanism through which at least some modicum of social justice and protection of the defenseless can be practically realized. (That is, a “modicum” across a larger zone than, say, one’s immediate neighbors.) It is called "defending the bad against the worse". I'm sure you've heard of it. It is the position that most of us find ourselves in, most of the time.

There’s no need to slander progressives and heap calumny on progressivism in order to make your generally very excellent points. Stick to the essentials. You’re stronger and more effective that way.

“A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from
injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free
to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement,
and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has
earned. This is the sum of good government.” –Thomas Jefferson

I want to say that . If you define "progressive" as people like Bill and Hillary Clinton, etc., (i.e. moderate Republicans, and unequivocal statists, and execrable robotic defenders of the status quo), then of course you’re right to scorn them. But I define progressive differently, and it is generally understood differently. ….
curt

This information are very educational! I quite do agree with you about building public awareness, support and market anarchism of our society. Nowadays we are build of believe and hatred.
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